


Still Waters

by Germinal



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Era, Character Study, Gen, One-Sided Enjolras/Grantaire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-30
Updated: 2013-07-30
Packaged: 2017-12-21 21:55:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/905390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Germinal/pseuds/Germinal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grantaire's progress, in mixed metaphor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Still Waters

The fact that a name still occasionally given to distilled brandy, _aqua vitae_ , was once a term also used for baptismal waters, is for Grantaire a source of amusement that never dries up. It is a well-spring of his conversation that from such baptismal waters he emerges every morning, cleansed of old sins to immerse himself in them anew. But each evening, three sheets to the wind, he finds by contrast he has cut himself adrift, becalmed in waters not so much baptismal as abysmal. 

It is to escape these doldrums that he plunges into political undercurrents with the effect of a stone thrown casually into a pool, content to spread disruptive ripples outwards, or else his contributions form a rocky obstacle around which the torrent of debate must swell and divide. Sometimes, disgruntled, he feels himself to be merely the silt and sediment over which the onrush of their sparkling conversation flows without hindrance or heed. At an especially low ebb he feels himself disdained, a stagnant tributary, his shallows lapping, overlooked, around Enjolras’ heels. 

When engaging with him Enjolras remains blunt, unfathomable, but under the surface of Grantaire’s arguments there can be detected the infinite patience with which water wears away at rock, smoothing through persistent abrasion the most forbidding of promontories, and the hope abides that he might reach some easy accommodation even with Enjolras’ glacial reserve.

Grantaire is familiar with the fast-flowing waters in which he has chosen to swim, aware of their capacity to turn suddenly, fatally turbulent, and at the same time fully recognises the futility of trying to hold back an oncoming deluge. He dives increasingly deeply into banter and irreverence in order to let himself ignore the approaching blaze of lights on their horizon. 

On the morning of the barricades, that clearing of the decks, with the rain falling as relentlessly as a rising tide, Grantaire begins to drink in deadly earnest, intent on diluting sorrows too vast to be altogether drowned. When he nails his colours to the mast at last, taking Enjolras’ hand in his and letting himself sink, the weight that drags him under is no longer that of a millstone around the neck but that of an anchor finally dropped at the end of a voyage.


End file.
